San Jose officials and others who had supported Santa Clara County's longtime former ambulance provider, American Medical Response, had warned county leaders that rival Rural/Metro wasn't up to the task.

And lo, since the county began the lucrative ambulance service contract with Rural/Metro in 2011, the county has warned Rural/Metro three times that it faced a potential "material breach of contract" for failure to meet agreed-upon standards, like arrival time targets to emergency scenes.

And now the county is warning Rural/Metro it has 10 days to settle $2 million in unpaid bills.

Will Rural/Metro's woes hurt the careers of County Executive Jeff Smith and the three supervisors who backed his recommendation for Rural/Metro? Speculation is already starting.

For one of those supervisors -- George Shirakawa Jr. -- it probably doesn't matter. He's already resigned and is awaiting sentencing on unrelated felony corruption charges.

Supervisor Mike Wasserman, who's up for re-election next year, had been in office about a month when the ambulance contract vote came up in December 2010. And despite Rural Metro's current woes, he says he's "confident our administration will have a plan in place in case a change becomes necessary."

Supervisor Dave Cortese, who is weighing a run for San Jose mayor, said by email from his secret vacation getaway that "we intend to enforce the terms of the contract and ensure uninterrupted service and continued public safety."

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As for Smith, the controversy is another dark cloud over him. In the last eight months he has had to confront questions over why county officials hadn't caught Shirakawa's misuse of his county credit card and failure to file campaign disclosure reports, as well as extra paid leave that the district attorney granted to his top supervisors that union leaders call improper.

Smith waved off concerns. Because of county agreements with the company, "it wouldn't necessarily change the level of service," he said.

"As long as the ambulance arrives when it is supposed to arrive and people get the care they need," he said, they won't notice whether Rural Metro's owner "is reorganizing their debt structure or not."

But the impacts are already being felt, not only from the missed response times but from ambulance malfunctions and the looming threat of a labor strike.

Whoops! Alum Rock school report backfires

Be careful what you wish for. The Alum Rock Educators Association, smarting from years of battles with former Superintendent Jose Manzo, asked the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury to look into what the union thought were illegal raises to managers.

The jury complied and launched an investigation.

What did it find?

Well, not only off-schedule raises to administrators, but a whole lot of not-by-contract raises for teachers.

The grand jury report issued last month said teachers have received longevity raises based on out-of-district experience, when the union contract says only years worked in Alum Rock should be counted.

And the jury chided the administration for granting similar raises, worth $2,364 annually, to those who technically didn't qualify.

The union claims that the teacher raises are legit, thanks to a grievance arbitration in 2005. But both former Superintendent Manzo and his successor, Stephen Fiss, said that they hadn't heard about that agreement until the grand jury probe. While the origins of Alum Rock's off-the-books pay are unclear, Fiss says he's cleaning up the payroll system, so that manager pay raises are approved by the board and made public.

Teachers union President Jocelyn Merz says the arbitration terms don't need to be included in a negotiated contract to be legal. Maybe so, but the State Teachers Retirement Board insists any raise not specified in the contract doesn't get credited toward a pension. Perhaps that might prod Alum Rock to bring contract language in line.

Hayward chief gets job for ex-colleague at SJPD

When he stepped down as president of the San Jose Police Officers' Association at the end of 2011, Lt. George Beattie said his mind had shifted toward retirement, and he was exploring other jobs. We can report now that the 53-year-old lieutenant has landed elsewhere.

After 25 years and two months with the San Jose police, Beattie has taken a $132,000 per-year civilian post as personnel and training administrator with the Hayward Police Department. Hayward officials say he began officially early this month.

What's the background? Well, insiders may remember that the chief of police in Hayward is Diane Urban, formerly the assistant chief in San Jose. Urban knows Beattie well, and as the exodus of veteran officers continues from San Jose, she hired him.

"George Beattie is an all-around class act who will bring years of field experience, people skills and leadership to our organization," Urban said by email.

Will he recruit San Jose cops in his new Hayward gig? Don't bother to ask.

San Mateo County chief attacks grand jury

A report by the San Mateo County civil grand jury that criticized the county's budgeting practices has led to a strange sight: a public feud between the county's top administrator and current and former leaders of the investigative body.

County Manager John Maltbie responded to the report, titled "An inconvenient truth about the county's so-called structural deficit," by submitting an opinion piece to local newspapers claiming the report exhibited an "abysmal lack of understanding" of budgetary matters and bemoaning California's grand jury system.

The article took a counterintuitive position: attacking grand juries in the name of transparency. Maltbie wrote that grand juries' "culture of secrecy" undermines their credibility.

The controversial report, issued Monday, claimed the county government has been misrepresenting its financial status -- stating the county faces a structural, or chronic, budget deficit while sucking tens of millions of dollars out of a special account filled with excess revenue. The county used $40 million from the account, dubbed the Educational Revenue Augmentation Fund, to balance the 2012-13 budget even as it pushed for a sales tax hike.

Maltbie countered that the fund, which lately has contained leftover money after the county distributes property tax revenues to schools, is not a reliable stream of long-term income. The county is right to account for it separately, he wrote.

But Maltbie did not get the last word. Six people who served as the jury's foreman or forewoman over the past decade wrote their own opinion piece responding to Maltbie. The piece, published in the San Mateo Daily Journal, called his stance "perplexing" and "disheartening."

Tim Johnson, foreman of the jury that produced the report on the education revenue fund, issued a separate statement claiming Maltbie is trying to distract attention from the issues raised in the report. He paraphrased a legal adage, writing, "If the facts are against you, pound on the law. If the law is against you, pound on the facts. If the facts and the law are against you, pound on the table."

Johnson concluded: "I leave it to the reader to decide what Mr. Maltbie is pounding on."

Internal Affairs is an offbeat look at state and local politics. This week's items were written by Tracy Seipel, Sharon Noguchi, Scott Herhold, Aaron Kinney and Paul Rogers. Send tips to internalaffairs@mercurynews.com, or call 408-975-9346.